


Paint Fumes

by corviiy



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ambiguity, Kissing, M/M, Trans Character, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 06:28:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4511421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corviiy/pseuds/corviiy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave, artistic as he is, needs to take a break from the paint fumes and take care of himself. Karkat helps him with bribery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paint Fumes

* * *

 

 

     It’s been eight mind numbing hours.

     Dave is perched on top of a small, uncomfortable looking wooden stool, un-shaded red eyes glued to the easel-cradled canvas in front of him. One of his thin legs is pulled up to his chest, the other hooked underneath a bar of the stool for balance as he curls forward. He must be aching. The sliding glass door to his patio is wide open, a gentle, humid draft warms up the space, but his air conditioning is on too, like he doesn’t give a shit about the bill. His view when gazing out is miles and miles of Houston city-scape, which dramatically contrasts the painting he’s working on.

     It’s been eight hours since you got here and you don’t think you’ve seen him get up a single time, or even move except to lean forward or back for perspective. You have no clue how long he’s actually been at it, but you’re shocked with this level of focus he actually thought to check his phone long enough to have a conversation with you that lead to you coming over to his apartment. Hell, you’re shocked that he’s able to maintain casual, lighthearted conversation with how focused he is on the canvas.

     The painting looked complete when you GOT there. Of course now it looks even more complete. It’s more than you could do with twice the supplies that he has. He’s certainly not some muddy, ambiguous Bob Ross wannabe, he’s made an actual art--no pun intended--out of making the acrylic look fluid. He gives real, high contrast value and color to the image of your hand waking gently the shallow, brackish looking water. When you got there it just looked artistic. Now it was looking like an experience.

     But he’s still going at it, and you don’t understand. It’s way past his human bedtime, which you think is ridiculously arbitrary because there is nothing they can’t do in the night what they can in the day. But, it’s almost sunrise, and you’re pretty sure he has to sleep or eat or something. In the midst of his blase attitude you can easily forget that what he’s doing to himself is inhuman, you only see it when he blinks or nods off for a second at a time. You don’t think you could do it, even being the intrinsically more durable species that you are.

     So you sit up from your cozy spot on his bed, your voice cutting through a low, melodic bass that his turntables are playing. He doesn’t startle even though you two have taken a break from talking for about forty minutes.

     “Aren’t you tired?” You ask.

     “Nah.” Is his curt reply as he works with a flat brush to add capillaries and splotches that you only see on people when you look at them long and hard. He’s lying, you know that he’s lying. He isn’t built for this, but that doesn’t stop him from doing it. It doesn’t stop him from neglecting himself in a lot of areas in his life, you’ve noticed.

     “I think you should consider going to bed soon.” You say anyway. His response is a snort. That’s ridiculous to him, apparently. “I didn’t realize I’d made a joke.” Uttered with a thin veil of irritation. Thin because you can’t actually have it in you to be legitimately irritated. It’s not like pushing himself has any direct effect on you.

     “Nah Karkat, my schedule’s gonna be all fucked up if I do that. Can’t sleep during the day, that’s dumb.” He says dismissively. He yawns, you laugh, and he shoots you this look like he didn’t just do the most oxymoronic thing you’ve ever seen.

     Then you watch it happen again. As he turns his attention back to the canvas he nods off. Enough that his foot slips out of the bar and you nearly spring off the bed to catch him, but before you’re even halfway through your mini heart attack he jerks back up, places his foot firmly on the easel bar and leans in again like it didn’t happen.

     “You know, it looks great, I don’t understand why you can’t take a break.” You mutter.

     “It has to be perfect.” He says back.

     “It is perfect.”

     “Not yet.”

 

     “When will it be perfect? What are you even going for? I don’t understand what’s so important about continuing to work on it, you’ve been sitting there since at least ten last night.” You remark. He bristles at this.

 

     “You don’t think it’s important?” His tone is a little deflated.

  
     “Dave...uhg. Dave, shut the fuck up. You know I think it’s brilliant. I just wanna know why it takes priority over your own health.” He relaxes a little, eyes half lidded as he continues to paint. There is hesitation in his energy for a minute, like he’s thinking.  
  
  
     “It’s nothing.” He mutters. You scoff, audibly chiding him for being a cagey prick.  
  
  
     “It’s not nothing, just, say what you mean.” You shot back at him. He blows a raspberry in response, setting his brush in his water cup and then drying it on a color-stained towel.  
  
  
     “I’m _painting_ what I mean, my dude. I think that counts for something. I mean this is an expression of a real life experience that I had, it’s important, it’s like. I had this situation I was in a couple of days ago--” His cheeks are getting red as he speaks “--and it, it was. Like, when it happened my brain slowed down and inflated it and it just. Put this picture in my head.”  
  
  
     “That picture?” You ask.  
  
  
     “This picture.” He nods at the canvas, puts a different color of paint on his brush.  
  
  
     “Of my hand?” You can see the tips of his ears go red. You don’t have to be looking at him head on to know the rest of him is also red.  
  
  
     “Yeah.” His answer is shorter than he is and almost as annoying.  
  
  
     “Well, why my hand?” It takes you a good minute and a half of watching him paint before you realize that he’s pointedly avoiding your question entirely, straight up pretending like you didn’t even just ask him anything. “I mean you could totally not answer me, I’ll just sit here wondering what in the blistering fuck you’re doing painting my body parts. Wondering what other body parts you’ve been painting, assuming I’m your ultimate muse in this intimate, expressive capacity. Mind running wild with the possibili--” He interrupts you with a groan, the flick of his wrist gets a little more aggressive.  
  
  
     “Sometimes you just experience things alright, and they’re beautiful and the person that you’re with is beautiful, and everything is perfect. And when it’s happening, man, you drink up all that shit, the feelings and colors and you just BURN them into your head, brand it like fuckin macrofarm cattle, you need to remember it, and you gotta think of shit to remember it. Because it’s so beautiful.” He’s starting to babble, the evening truly wouldn’t be complete without a cheesy as hell monologue but you can feel that he’s actually trying to throw you off of figuring out what the painting is about. “And that shit happens all the time, there is literally no way of telling if maybe it was that one time or this one time hell maybe it was even just a dream or something.”  
  
  
     You stand up as he continues to prattle along, feigning that you need a different view point of his painting. It was a beautiful painting, but you can’t exactly take an educated guess at whatever the fuck he’s talking about unless you can see his face.  
  
  
     And boy does his face tell you all you need to know. His cheeks are lit up underneath his freckles, on fire. He catches his lower lip with his teeth and chews on it, and you know that particular gesture to be one of whenever he thought of something a little more flustering. Something beautiful that made him blush, it had something to do with you obviously because it was your hand on the canvas.  
  
  
     Your mind jumps to the previous week. You’d asked to kiss him while the two of you were eating lunch at his breakfast bar. He’d laughed it off because of course you’d kissed him before, that wasn’t a new thing in your relationship--whatever it was. A second into the kiss he came to understand why you’d asked beforehand. It was a lot more exploratory, a lot more heated, a lot more intimate than anything you two had shared yet. When you pulled away he had this absolutely blissed out kissed-fucking-senseless look on his face that his current expression was a vague reflection of.  
  
  
     He side eyes you nervously, release his plump lower lip from it’s prison between his teeth. Slowly, he relaxes, and from this angle you can truly see how haggard he is from his marathon painting. He’s got bags under his eyes for days, and he can’t even maintain the blush on his cheeks, the color draining under how tired he is. His breathing even seems a little labored. Not entirely, but sometimes he takes deeper breaths, squirms.  
  
  
     “You know you’re really fuckin’ with my zen right now just standing there and staring. I expected some kinda response after that whole emotional soapbox that might I remind you poked out of me so why don’t you do something like say something or sit down or--”  
  
  


  
  
  
     You stoop down and catch his lips in a kiss. It’s just like any of your others, at first, but you then hold his cheek, tangle your fingers in his hair and lean him back. His left hand jerks to brace himself, white knuckling hard against the wood, as if you’d ever let him fall from the grace that was his stool. His paint bespeckled arm lowers away from the canvas, resting on his bare thigh.  
  
  
     He’s so mutable to what’s happening. His lips part when yours do, he tilts his head and pushes against your mouth. Your tongue doesn’t get too invasive, you know he doesn’t like the whole full-on tongue fucking thing, but he humors the playful poke or flick of it and then some. He was so amused the first time your tongue ran over his braces and got cut, this time you’re much more careful.  
  
  
     When you pull away his face is heated again, his eyes are closed and he looks just about ready to drift off completely. It gives you an idea. You balance him upright again and wait for him to open his eyes.  
  
  
     “Well it’s not exactly what I had in mind but that works.” He mutters, leaning up to try and kiss you again. You push your thumb over his lips and shake your head.  
  
  
     “I’ll kiss you like that again. But it has to be in bed. You’re done with this for the night, you have to go to sleep.” You offer. His face screws up in confusion, so you explain it again. “I’ll kiss you to sleep. Sound alright?” His eyes drift over to his painting, the setup, the open paint and the wide open door. You can tell he wants to keep kissing you at least, but something is making him hesitate and it’s not the prospect of sleep. You find his hand, gently uncurl it from the brush and remove the utensil.  
  
  
     “I’ll take care of it.” You mumble, placing the brush in the water cup. He’s halfway through questioning what that meant when you gather him up in your arms, kissing his cheek, the piercing on his eyebrow, his nose. His bed is a couple of steps over and you practically toss him onto it, showering him in short pecks when he tries to sit up. When he finally gets the message and lays down, you pull away and turn to the easel.  
  
  
     First, you make sure the brush is nice and clean, then you toss the water outside over the balcony. You run through all the motions of capping the paints, then gently lift the whole easel, edge it outside so that the painting can dry. You’re careful over the carpet, so it doesn’t catch and go totally catastrophic as a result. Once the whole setup is outside you slip back in and start to close the door. He sits up.  
  
  
     “Don’t.”  
  
  
     “Don’t what? Close the door? Dude I can see the sky starting to get light, it’s gonna get hot.”  
  
  
     “Not all the way. Leave it cracked so the fumes can get out.” He mumbles, yawning. It’s good to see him accepting his fate, at least. You do as he says and leave about a foot of space open, but you do close the mesh door so that bugs don’t get in. You flip off the overhead light, and everything becomes a relaxing cool, dark hue. It’s easy on the eyes and it should put him to bed easier.  
  
  
     Turning to him, he seems to really be clinging onto the last scrap of his consciousness. You briefly wonder if seriously macking on him is gonna rile him up instead of what you want it to do, but you really doubt it with the half-dazed look he’s giving you.  
  
  
     You stride towards him, ease onto the bed. He scoots back a little, closer to where you know he’s going to end up falling asleep. His face is already faintly tinted with the color of his affections for you while you crawl over him. He wraps his arms around you, eager to get smooched dizzy, but you don’t want to go so fast. You feel like if you dive right into it, passionate might get heated and he’ll wake up more. You don’t think either of you are ready to act on that so it’s better to avoid blue balls altogether.  
  
  
     You place a soft kiss on the corner of his mouth, your lips part slightly as you press it against him. He exhales a small noise of frustration, it dawns on his sleepy mind that you're taking it as slow as possible. Other than the noise, he doesn’t protest. Not even when your next kiss avoids his mouth also, landing softly on his chin. The next is on his jaw, and he gets a little more awares of where you’re heading. When you try to press your next one closer to his neck he dips his chin a little bit, the corner of his full lips curled in satisfaction as he cleverly manages to catch your own in the kiss you’d been evading.  
  
  
     Clearly his tiredness and basorexia weighed out over any desire he might have to flip to the more active side of physical intimacy. It gives you what you need to proceed. You can already feel how hot his face is, so close to yours, and you wrap your arms up around him. One of them slips underneath his back, hand held firm against his ribcage. The other tangles into his wavy locks, steers his head to a tilt so you can deepen the kiss.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
     His eyes are open, half lidded and locked on you, but glazed over with fatigue. Whole body pliant under your touch, he eases the position by relaxing, his paint covered fingers gingerly card through your locks. You can’t even be mad about it, not when he parts his lips, exhaling something like pleasure. His eyes finally flutter shut and he throws himself into the kiss. Body arched up against yours, lips moving languidly.  
  
  
     The kiss reaches a fever pitch sooner than you expect it to, his breath getting quick and hot. You think for a second maybe he’s trying to make it more sensual, but it’s not necessary. You purposefully slow down because of that, make him take it in stride. You will yourself to stop opening your mouth more and making the kiss increasingly provocative. He, conversely, gets more tenacious, you even feel his tongue ring pass over your lower lip. You’re weak though, and as you sink down to lay more next to him than on top of him, he’s back to working on making you sore and swollen from kisses.  
  
  
     At some point, his breath hitches and you realize he is really, really out of breath. His face is so warm and his panting reminds you of something. Your hands ride up his waist, underneath his shirt. He pushes himself into your touch, too prospective, and you pull away from kissing him.  
  
  
     “Dave you--you have to take it off.” You mutter. Underneath his tank top, your fingers find the zipper of his binder. “Are you hot?” He nods, breath heavy on your lips. You bring down the zipper gently and help him shimmy the clothing item off underneath the rest of his clothes. Then he lets you pull his painting sweater over his head gently. After that he starts to settle down in your arms. Kisses become slow, his breathing becomes more steady. They start to space out more, too, you notice he’s trying to keep the will to continue kissing you.  
  
  
     He’s asleep in a matter of minutes. As you’d figured. Curled up against your side, head tucked underneath your chin just as the break of dawn lights up the room. That’s fine with you, you’re used to sleeping during the daylight hours, and he’s too tired to wake up from it. You begin to gently stroke his arm, the one that’s draped across your shoulders. Your other arm curls up and you rest it gently in his hair, pressing soft kisses into his forehead. His legs find a way to sandwich yours into a vice of sorts, and you gaze off towards the painting outside.  
  
  
     It’s starting to get hard to look at and really study. The light behind it from sunrise is starting to silhouette the whole setup, but you can still make out the pose. You try it out on the hand that’s stroking his arm without actually interrupting the stroking. You wonder how he could possibly look at you and see something as beautiful as what he’s painted, but you also can’t deny it’s a spitting image of the body part in question.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
     Your eyes flick shut. You’ll have plenty of time to figure it out. For now, you allow yourself to relax into the same state of much needed sleep he’s already reached.

**Author's Note:**

> feedback appreciated! find me on tumblr at corviiy.tumblr.com


End file.
